I think you're discounting the value of people's opinions too much. Basing a decision on what the denizens of Hacker news think is the best answer is a perfectl

I think you're discounting the value of people's opinions too much. Basing a decision on what the denizens of Hacker news think is the best answer is a perfectly acceptable method of moving forward. Whole businesses and methods are based on this sort of wisdom (Crowdsourcing answers, the Facebook "Like" button, re-tweets on Twitter). Choosing the most popular answer might have it's drawbacks, but sometimes its the right answer. You have a point in that time of day and all the other factors you listed might skew the results, but it might not skew them in a way that bothers me. If something is the best answer, I'm sure people in Asia or Europe or America can pick it out. They might have wildly different answers, or they could also be exactly the same. I get the impression you think just because people "liked" one answer the best isn't a technical enough reason to go with that answer, and in fact you think the decision should be based on something more substantial. I disagree that this always needs to happen.